264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE : ITS 

 CRITICISMS, ITS BENEFITS. 



BY C. K. BREWSTEli, WORTHINGTON. 



Thirty-eight years ago, when the nation was passing 

 through the most trying ordeal in its history, the late Hon. 

 Justin S. Morrill of Vermont introduced a bill, which 

 passed through Congress, providing for the sale'of public 

 lands for the purpose of establishing agricultural colleges in 

 different States. From the sale of the 360,000 acres of the 

 public lands allotted to Massachusetts was realized the sum 

 of $208,464. In 1871 this amount was increased by the 

 Legislature of Massachusetts to $360,000, the whole con- 

 stituting a perpetual fund, two-thirds of the income to be 

 paid annually to the treasurer of the Massachusetts Agricult- 

 ural College, and one-third to the treasurer of the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology. Twenty-five years later a 

 second act of Congress established with each college an ex- 

 periment station, with an annual endowment of $750,000. 

 Three years later another bill provided for an annual grant 

 to each college established, commencing with $15,000 and 

 increasing each year $1,000 till the maximum of $25,000 

 had been reached. This was divided as before, to wit, two- 

 thirds to the Agricultural College and one-third to the Insti- 

 tute of Technology. These facts you are doubtless familiar 

 with, and will find more elaborately stated in the opening of 

 the thirty-fourth annual report of the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural College. 



The establishment of these colleges seemed to provide for 

 a long-felt want, in that it offered opportunities to a class of 

 people as students and patrons that were not able to make 

 use of the older and more classical institutions. Long ago 

 Aristotle said, " The salvation of a country in a crisis must 

 lie in its middle classes," and these institutions seemed to 



